chad
So where do I even begin?
My name is Chad, clearly.. Im 23, I'm definitely 100% new to the forum (didn't know it existed up until yesterday when I signed up)
I've been playing a guitar for 5 years, it all began when I bought a takemine G series. It was a R3500 instrument and it was an impulsive buy, there was no calculated thought behind it, at that time I knew nothing about guitars, all I knew is, I liked the thinner neck guitars with cut outs, which seemed to always have steel strings.. Lol
I was 18 :? and truth be told the reason for learning guitar had two parts to it.
1 - I had always wanted to play guitar and a part of me found rock stars awesome. But was too self critical to pick an instrument up (same reason I didn't draw until 22)
2 - I was obese at the time, I weighed 128 kilograms and I'm a short dude 1.74 tall, my BMI was in the very worst category I could be in so, I was no looker and I figured I'd like to attract women's attention hahahahahhaa (looking back I put this down to hormones) so jack black was a chubby dude who seemed to capture the hearts of all, in the pick of destiny etc.
So I thought hey man, here's a gap in the market, I need to serenade the ladies!
Subsequently I found "serenading" was not going to happen, as soon as I got home and said okay what's next. I realized, Eish this is a 10 year self improvement project, there's no quick fix here. (5 years in I still think I need another 10 years lol)
The whole "for the women" thing fell away, and I fell in love with music, the concept of 12 musical notes, fell in line with my love for astronomy which my grandfather instilled in me at a young age when we'd talk about the stars and I was 4, going on trippy Odysseus through the galaxy of my mind. The 12 zodiac signs had always intrigued me because I saw most of the world was concerned about their horoscopes, but I found the idea of the sun rising in each constellation for 2500ish years fascinating,
Now, of course, the sharps and flats have to be counted as "musical notes" to make up 12, so I found the fact that 7 natural notes, fell quite in line with the theory of light spectrum quite crazy too. And so, music sucked me into its depths, what were modes? Why did different cultures end up at the exact same values for certain sounds, for example, why do western minor scales reflect "traditional" scales from around the world, which are synonymous with "sad music" like Arabian music, and why was modulation so affective in strange cultures from all around the world? Hahahahaha so you see how music sort of, entrapped me with fitting perfectly in between all my personal interests.
A few months into playing I got the opportunity to play a Taylor which was R55k and all of a sudden I was like, wow. What is this thing!?
Being 18 it was a little out of the budget. So I reserved myself to one day owning something amazing.
That night I woke up sweating like a beast and had the most incredible dream, as cheesy as it sounds, I was building badass boutique guitars and I went back to sleep.
The next morning I remembered the dream and I was like well I mean is thst even possible??? Csn you build a guitar? I did some reading and found out you definitely can, and the world appreciates this kind of thing. So I set out looking for an apprenticeship, which didn't go well hahaha but I was lucky in that,
My dad was a pattern maker and composite specialist and he had 25 years of experience in clients walking through his door with the craziest things to the most mundane things, (from simple kiosks for corporate promotional purposes to locomotive drive train components which had to be made 1.5% bigger overall in all aspects to tske in account shrinkage of the foundry) so I figured if there was anyone I could ask about how to build something it would be him.
I sat him down and told him my idea, now to put this into perspective I had grown up my whole life going to my dad with my next cool idea of something I'd like to make, he'd usually just, rip it a part, point out all the problems and I'd be pretty shattered but, I knew he was right haha, after all I was asking someone with experience as someone with no experience. So I had to take it on the chin and be realsitc and when I told him about my guitar plan, for the first time in my life he actually endorsed it, and told me that.
Now I am actually onto something realistic (he knew about my failed attempts at an apprenticeship)
I'll go more into detail about what transpired IF you, the readers would like to know how it unfolded, but basically,
5 years later. After a lot of tears, blood and sweat, as well as losing 68 kgs, I have finally completed my first real product which I will offer to the market.
I made the pro type a year ago, but didn't really talk to anyone about it, because I didn't want to be making instruments unsure of, whether they'd last etc. so I held onto my prototype for the last year, testing it, abusing it, throwing it around, trying to collapse the decks, dropping it on purpose, just generally doing everything you shouldn't do to your instrument.
I'm thrilled to say after a year of the worst kind of abuse and water torture interrogation the pro type pulled through relatively unscaved (structurally intact but full of scratches haha) I began making my first legitimate product,
It takes about 3 months to build, so.. I'll go into more detail about the guitar and perhaps the story, in sections of the forum designated for such info, because I'm sticking to my intro.
Long intro huh? But I'm told people like to know you.
So why put a
Hey
I'm Chad.
Sup this is my thing.
Cheers
Kind of message up?
I look forward to chatting, discussing, giggling and maybe performing? I'm shy, very shy haha
I seem to be struggling with uploading images though
chad
Evening friends,
I am still trying to figure my way around the site, hahahaha I feel like, exactly what my profile says I am "newb"
I have made some post in the deals section, where I linked my own gumtree post, which has got as many pictures as I could fit on it, there's also a YouTube link, so y'all can hear it,
ill continue with my attempts. I look forward to the chats!
chad
Hey tedibear thank you very much for the run down, perhaps you may know what's happening.
Once I've added the image, I hit the post or preview option and regardless of the choice, i get a pop up saying "an error has occurred., you can only upload files which are JPEG etc,
It's weird because you literally posted my picture better than I can hahahahahaha I tried uploading the very same picture just to see what would happen, and I got the message, but I get that messgae with everything I try upload as an image,
I thought it may be because the file is too large, so I reduced its size significantly and still, got the error message,
So perhaps I need to put the iPad aside, grab a pc and get to it with that.
